I love movies. That said, most fail to make a considerable emotional impact outside of “That was cool!”

So imagine my surprise when I see two ads from Thailand that make me feel all welly-in-the-eyes.

The first has seen some considerable sharing on Facebook. The second I saw because someone posted it in the comments of the first. Both are inspirational, both deliver messages about how we should live and what truly matters in life. And sadly, they’re both trying to sell us something. But ignore that. Just watch the actual content and stop it before the real commercially bit at the end. I love these. And it shows you don’t need a long time to impact your audience emotionally, you just need to be honest and speak from your heart.

So Verizon, not satisfied with their fat pocketbooks, have decided to take the FCC to court. They are arguing that the FCC doesn’t have the right to tell them to maintain net neutrality.

In a nutshell, Verizon wants to be able to block, or push back, websites that don’t pay for the privilege of being delivered to Verizon customers. In other words, little blogs like mine might be invisible to Verizon customers because I won’t/can’t pay Verizon to carry my site.

Now we can’t blame Verizon entirely. They are a corporation. And in case you haven’t been keeping up with corporations, they don’t give a damn about you, or me, or what is beneficial to a country’s economy. All they care about is making more money for themselves. They will do it on our backs or our corpses, whichever nets the best returns. So Verizon not caring about their customers having open access to any information they might want/need isn’t surprising.

The FCC argues that in order for the US to remain competitive and the economy to continue forward, net neutrality must be maintained.

I have an idea. One that, yes, would require government expenditure, but would result in many jobs, and in the long term, add money into government coffers; build a government run internet infrastructure.

Now I know, you’re all going to scream about how you don’t want the government to know what you’re looking at, etc. Well, in case you missed it, they already do. About the only real difference I see between me paying the government for internet access and paying some corporation is that by paying the government, my money goes towards paying for my health care, roads, defense, and much more. Instead of my money going to some corporate goon who’ll use it to buy a bigger house or a nicer boat.

All I’m say is, if the government truly believes in net neutrality, and their own justice system isn’t going to allow them to do it, then screw the companies, take it over. The second Verizon’s profits drop, they’ll be begging for net neutrality to be reinstated on their servers.

If you currently use Verizon, look to see if you can use a different provider, and if they win this court case, make the switch. And when you call to cancel, make sure you tell them it’s because you don’t need some greedy corporate overlord telling you what you can view on the web.

So my new novella, due out September 17th, has just returned to my hands from Beta/Edits. A little polishing needed, but not too shabby. I really did have fun with this and I’m looking forward to putting it out to the world and seeing how it does. It’s very different from The Bleeding Worlds, which has me both excited and very nervous.

Speaking of The Bleeding Worlds, now that this novella is nearly out of my system, I have started work on Book Three! It even has a title. Well, I suppose it could change, but it’s stayed strong and definite in my mind for a few months now. So, just to put it out there, book three of The Bleeding Worlds will be called Resonance. The current plan is to focus exclusively on it until release day. When will that be? Well, I’d love to give a definite date, and be able to stick to it, but I’m not sure right now. I’ll have to see how the writing goes. My hope is to have it out in the first few months of 2014. There will be far more updates as the writing progresses.

Finally, just to spice up this post, here’s the cover for my novella, Revelation Game.

I hope you’ll give it a chance when it releases on September 17th. For the foreseeable future, it will be an Amazon exclusive and only available in eBook format.

I’m not a big fan of celebrities. Even when they do something “good” it seems to be self-serving. Perhaps that’s because they’re always in the spotlight. Who knows?

But every now and then, something comes out of one of their mouths that leaves me impressed. This happened yesterday when I saw a video of Ashton Kutcher accepting an award at the Teen Choice Awards.

You all remember Ashton – the lovable airhead from That 70’s Show, and a bunch of other things I’ve never watched. He’s got a new film coming out in which he plays Steve Jobs. And perhaps it was walking in Jobs’ shoes that inspired this particular speech.

The comments on YouTube point out that the vast majority of kids won’t appreciate these words until they’re much older. And perhaps that’s true. On the other hand, if his words inspire just one kid, or give comfort to a handful of other kids who are living their lives this way, then it was more than worth it. I think in our society, where everything is disposable and much of our innovations appear aimed at making life easier, it’s a good message to hammer home that the road isn’t always easy. I especially like his comment that he ‘never had a job he was better than.’

Kudos Mr. Kutcher. I might just watch the Jobs biopic with a higher level of regard for you.

I said earlier I’d like to find cool things to blog about. Well, I found one of those things tonight.

My boys are autistic. While they don’t specifically have OCD, the tendencies in autistics can be quite strong. So I get it. I understand the pain of the person with OCD and the exhaustion of the one who tries to live with them and love them.

This poet is incredible. His words and delivery show the depth of power such things can have. He speaks of love and it’s moving in a way few movies or novels claiming to be about the subject manage.